Bluesky, which runs on open source software and is based on an open protocol for social platforms, has lately seen it’s user base take a 10-fold increase as Brazil shutters TwitterX.
At 9.5 million and counting, the number of registered users at the social media platform Bluesky is about to hit 10 million, which is up from just a little over a million only a year ago. This is an even larger jump in users than Mastodon saw a couple of years back when Elon Musk ruined Twitter by buying it, firing practically everybody, and giving Trump his account back.
In a way, history is repeating itself, because Bluesky’s big jump in users is also thanks to Musk and TwitterX. The lion’s share of its new accounts are being opened in Brazil, where the government has ordered internet service providers to make X unavailable. This came after Musk failed to address the country’s Supreme Court’s concerns about accounts on X that Brazil has accused of spreading disinformation. Musk responded to the government’s move by announcing that his satellite-based ISP, Starlink, would defy the order and continue to make X available to Brazillian subscribers. Brazil counter-responded by freezing Starlink’s financial accounts in the country, saying it was doing so to make sure that fines being levied against X get paid.
In other words, September hasn’t been a very good month for Musk. The fines that have been levied against X are already at $3 million and continue to pile up as Musk fights what he claims to be a free speech issue. The platform going dark means he’s also lost, at least temporarily, one of X’s most important markets, which is especially not good considering that X has been hemorrhaging money under Musk’s blundering rule.
9.5 million users…
— Mike Masnick (@mmasnick.bsky.social) Sep 9, 2024 at 12:19 AM
Mike Masnick, board member at Bluesky — as well as founder and CEO of Techdirt — posted early Monday morning about Bluesky’s increasing number of users.
What’s bad for X has been good for Bluesky however, as nearly all of the recent rapid jump in users at Bluesky has been coming from Brazil. It only figures that Brazillians looking for a quick X replacement would turn to Bluesky, since it has a similar look and feel to X.
It also only figures that Bluesky is a lot like X, since the project was first announced to the world by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who also served on the platforms board from 2022 until sometime around May of this year, which is when he announced he was no longer on Bluesky’s board and oddly endorsed X.
Bluesky comes to the table with a lot of open source cred as it’s not only based on AT Protocol, the open standards-based decentralized social network protocol, it runs on open-source software using the MIT license. Also, many of its financial supporters are people long associated with open source. Joe Beda, one of the creators of Kubernetes is an investor, as is Bob Young, co-founder of Red Hat, and Heather Meeker, an open source licensing specialist.
Whether Bluesky’s current good fortune will have a noticeable and lasting effect on the platform is anyone’s guess. For one thing, it’s almost a certainty that access to X in Brazil will eventually be restored. If that happens in the next week or two, then it’s probably a given that most of those new users will abandon the platform for the familiarity of X. On the other hand, if the riff between Musk and Brazil stretches out for a month or longer, those new users might grow comfortable with Bluesky — where there are fewer trolls and the signal to noise ratio is more palatable to sanity — and decide to stay.
Even if the platform holds onto it’s new users in Brazil, that doesn’t guarantee that it’s popularity in South America will spill over into other regions.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
Speech isn’t free if it’s only for people with whom you agree.
Many people might find you article hateful. Should you be censored?
Lies and misinformation, even when they come from the left, are still lies and misinformation. It’s a slippery slope to where everyone is afraid to speak without fear of being canceled, or thrown in prison as is happening and China, Brazil, UK, etc.
Elon is a hero.